Childhood Trauma and the Creative Product—A Look at the Early Lives and Later Works of Poe, Wharton, Magritte, Hitchcock, and Bergman

TRAUMA IN CHILDHOOD MAY SET A THEME FOR THE SUBSEQUENT work of the artist. This comes about through the unconsciously activated mechanisms of play and reenactment. Although most children who are traumatized play out their "games" of trauma in a grim, monotonous way (Terr, 1981), the especially gifted child may do something special, something quite compelling. This special child, for instance, may tell a friend, "I thought up a verse, 'Ring Around the Rosie,'" as the Black Plague invades his medieval street. Or she may compose a little chant to express her terror of mechanized menaces, and everybody else will jump rope to the rhyme: "Polly on the railway, Picking up stones, Along came an engine, And broke Polly's bones. 'Oh,' said Polly, 'That's not fair.' 'Oh,' said the engine driver, 'I don't care.' How many bones did Polly break? One, two, three, four …" (a modern English grade-school jump-rope ditty, as quoted by Alison Lurie, 1985, p. 157).

We know that sometimes there is a delay between trauma and play. A child may wait to reenact—perhaps he has not found his metier yet, or perhaps a new and lesser external stress has not yet